Passive Seismic Tomography at Rudna Copper Ore Mine

Seismic tomography is a technique widely used to image the Earth’s interior at various scales, from the very local subsurface to the whole Earth’s interior. Successful tomographic applications in seismology have opened the question of whether, or not, the method can also be helpful in assessing the safety of mining operations. Long-time efforts and accumulated evidence with tomography imaging carried out at the Rudna copper mine clearly indicate that this is really the case. Repeating imaging of velocity distributions reveals that the observed temporal changes provide information that is useful for improving the safety of mining processes. In this paper, we describe our experience of performing seismic passive velocity tomography at the Rudna copper ore mine in the south-western part of Poland. We consider only the last 10 years, when the geophysical unit of Rudna copper mine began using an advanced modern tomography software developed originally for this mine.

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Opracowanie rekordu w ramach umowy 509/P-DUN/2018 ze środków MNiSW przeznaczonych na działalność upowszechniającą naukę (2019).